Justine's Thoughts: The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld

The Last Days
By Scott Westerfeld

Pages:

286

A quote:

When the last days come, they will come quickly.

Any thoughts:

• I searched for this book in Scott Westerfeld’s website...but I can’t find it anywhere! I mean, it’s a sequel to Peeps, so it would only make sense if The Last Days was on that same page. I don’t know, I just don’t get it.

• Now, I understand. This is taken from Scott Westerfeld’s site: “Just to remind you, The Last Days is my not-really-a-sequel to Peeps. It’s set in the same parasite-afflicted New York City, but instead of the Night Watch, it follows a bunch of kids trying to start a band and get famous.” Anyway, I won’t give the rest away because it may spoil some things.

• There is some “fact goodness” before each chapter in the novel, which had sparked my interest as always. I love me some pieces of information.

• One more thing I love is how it’s written in different points of view. Five, to be exact. They’re all in first-person. And the thing is: each character has a different style, so you instantly recognize who is narrating. It’s the same in Peeps: Luce always says “dude” a lot, and she’s fierce, in my opinion. In The Last Days, a new character - Zahler - says “fawesome” and “fool” instead of “cool”, Pearl says “nine/all kinds of...”, and etc. You get the point. It’s just really interesting how Scott Westerfeld gives each character a signature.

• Music in The Last Days is described so beautifully, that I found myself rereading the same paragraph more than twice. Of course, it helps too that one of the characters hallucinates sometimes. Still, it’s like you can picture the music notes floating in the air, reaching out and affecting the audience. Music really is a big part of the story, but I can’t say why since that’s a spoiler.

• One thing I was excited to read about was the characters from Peeps coming back! That’s right; two characters appear in the novel towards the end and I was trying to read slowly to...capture that moment, haha. I just love them, that’s all.

• Overall, I really enjoyed Peeps and The Last Days. They don’t really seem like the typical vampire books you read about these days. But that’s okay, originality is a good thing. Plus, you can learn a lot about parasites and evolution.